Ruling — Vagrantsong

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Vagrantsongbg-340325-en-1e

Setup

1. Place 27 Rummage Tokens into the Bindle, unless instructed otherwise by a Scenario.[1]

2. Shuffle the Junk cards labeled Tier 1 to create the starting Junk deck.[1]

3. Follow the specific setup instructions in the Scenario Book, which may include placing Terrain, Markers, Event Tokens, Vagrants, and the Threshold Marker.[1]

4. Find the associated Ritual cards for the Scenario and place them face up near the train board.[1]

5. For the first Scenario, the final setup step is to read and resolve the associated Event.[1]

6. Each player chooses a Vagrant.[2]

7. Each player takes their 3 Coins, standee(s), Vagrant card, and 2 Starting Skills.[2]

8. Each player takes a Humanity Token and places it on top of their maximum Humanity (indicated by a solid-colored heart).[2]

9. Each player places their Starting Skills (and/or Junk) into the appropriate slots on their Vagrant card.[2]

The Scenario Phase

1. At the start of each round, players discuss which Vagrant will take their turn first.[3]

2. During a Vagrant's turn, the Vagrant performs Actions by placing their Coins on Skill cards or General Actions.[3]

3. At the start of a Vagrant's turn, they return any Coins that were placed on Skills, General Actions, or onto the train board so they may be placed again.[3]

4. After the first Vagrant completes their turn by performing Actions, it becomes the Haint's turn.[3]

5. After the Haint's turn is over, a Vagrant who has not yet taken a turn does so.[3]

6. This process of alternating Vagrant and Haint turns continues until all Vagrants have taken their turns, followed by the last Haint turn of that round.[3]

7. A round ends after the Haint takes its last turn and no more Vagrants remain to take a turn.[3]

8. After a round ends, move the Round Marker to the next highest number on the Round Track (if the marker is on the 6th space, it moves back to the 1st).[3]

The Camp Phase

1. Determine the total Coins to spend by adding the Coins from each Vagrant who played in the previous Scenario (usually 3 per Vagrant).[4]

2. Add any Coins gained from Rewards of completed Rituals (using an unplayed Vagrant to add the Coin to the pool).[4]

3. Add any other sources of Coins used during the Camp Phase.[4]

4. Players may permanently discard Broken Junk cards (attached to a Vagrant or in Belongings) to gain one Coin per card discarded.[4]

5. Players collaboratively choose how to spend the Coins on Actions such as Acquiring New Skills, Acquiring Junk, Healing a Wound, Fixing Broken Junk, or Rummaging.[4]

6. Any Coins from Rituals or discarded Broken Junk not spent during this step are removed and cannot be used later.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook · p.12 · Anatomy of a Scenario · Pack The Bindle · Create The Junk Deck · Setup According to the Scenario · Scenario Book Page 1

[2] RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook · p.8 · Starting Off (Choosing Vagrants) · Empress · Passive - Boxcar Queen · Starting Skills · Playstyle · Cursebearer · …

[3] RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook · p.14 · Playing Vagrantsong ( The Scenario Phase ) · Rounds · Turns · A Vagrant's Turn · PASSIVES

[4] RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook · p.31 · 1. SPEND COINS

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 201 ms · ask 7813 ms · total 8016 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8016 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "Remember these when playing: 1. Rules on E vents, cards, and Scenarios supersede rules in this Rule Book. If these rules contradict one another , follow the rules on the Event first, then the card (such as an In-Between or Skill card), then the Scenario, and finally this Rule Book. 2. Whene ver play", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 32, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "During the Manage Vagrants step, players may also choose to play as a different Vagrant if they would like. To do so, first permanently discard any Exclusive Skills that you have learned as the Vagrant you no longer wish to play. Starting Skills are not permanently discarded this way and may be take", "headingPath": "Choosing a New Vagrant · Adding New Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046875, "snippet": "Before you play, you will need to set up the train board! When setting the game up for the first time, place the 27 Rummage Tokens that come in the Vagrantsong Box into the Bindle. This is the default setup, and unless instructed otherwise you will return it to this state after every game. Many effe", "headingPath": "Anatomy of a Scenario · Pack The Bindle · Create The Junk Deck · Setup According to the Scenario · Scenario Book Page 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044604, "snippet": "In Vagrantsong, the ultimate goal is collaborative fun. Remember these when playing: Rules on Events, cards, and Scenarios supersede rules in this Rule Book. If these rules contradict one another, follow the rules on the Event first, then the card (such as an In-Between or Skill card), then the Scen", "headingPath": "THE HOBO CODE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.042838, "snippet": "For this step, players are given multiple options and Actions that are unique to the Camp Phase that they can perform. Players will collaboratively make choices during this step. To start, players must determine how many Coins they have to spend! Each Vagrant who played in the previous Scenario adds", "headingPath": "1. SPEND COINS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 34, "score": 0.041607, "snippet": "Below are two charts to help with timing during a round of play and the Camp Phase. Round begins! Move the Round Marker up one and any Events (or Tokens) on that space on the Round Track trigger. Then any 'beginning of round' special rules trigger. Vagrants decide together which Vagrant should perfo", "headingPath": "5. START NEXT SCENARIO · Round & Turn Order Timing Chart · 3.\t The Haint takes a turn.", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 39, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The songs that come to mind aren't the ones you're used to singin'. They're more complex than a love or union song. The trouble is... where to start? Time to start learnin' how the rest of the instruments work: Draw Skill Card #39. Time to stretch those vocal chords a bit: Draw Skill Card #40. The m", "headingPath": "Moment 8 · Choose One: · Moment 9 · Moment 10 · Moment 11 · Moment 12", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 52, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A round is the complete rotation of Vagrant and Haint turns. Players may choose the order in which Vagrants take turns; this order may be changed from round to round. At the start of the round, first resolve any Events or Tokens on the current round. Vagrants and Haints then alternate taking turns, ", "headingPath": "ROUNDS AND TURNS · VAGRANT TURN · GENERAL ACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Anatomy of a Scenario · Pack The Bindle · Create The Junk Deck · Setup According to the Scenario · Scenario Book Page 1", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Starting Off (Choosing Vagrants) · Empress · Passive - Boxcar Queen · Starting Skills · Playstyle · Cursebearer · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing Vagrantsong ( The Scenario Phase ) · Rounds · Turns · A Vagrant's Turn · PASSIVES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}, {"page": 31, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. SPEND COINS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1162}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1162 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1162 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.90955 of 2200 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 12:16 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)		p.3	0.047938 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Choosing a New Vagrant · Adding New Players	p.32	0.046898 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Anatomy of a Scenario · Pack The Bindle · Create The Junk Deck · Setup According to the Scenario · Scenario Book Page 1	p.12	0.046875 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	THE HOBO CODE	p.3	0.044604 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	1. SPEND COINS	p.31	0.042838 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	5. START NEXT SCENARIO · Round & Turn Order Timing Chart · 3. The Haint takes a turn.	p.34	0.041607 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Moment 8 · Choose One: · Moment 9 · Moment 10 · Moment 11 · Moment 12	p.39	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	ROUNDS AND TURNS · VAGRANT TURN · GENERAL ACTIONS	p.52	0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 80 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)		p.3	#1	0.047938 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Choosing a New Vagrant · Adding New Players	p.32	#2	0.046898 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Playing Vagrantsong ( The Scenario Phase ) · Rounds · Turns · A Vagrant's Turn · PASSIVES	p.14	#9	0.029418 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Starting Off (Choosing Vagrants) · Empress · Passive - Boxcar Queen · Starting Skills · Playstyle · Cursebearer · …	p.8	#14	0.024706 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	1. SPEND COINS	p.31	#5	0.042838 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Rituals	p.13	#23	0.020915 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	THE HOBO CODE	p.3	#4	0.044604 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Anatomy of a Scenario · Pack The Bindle · Create The Junk Deck · Setup According to the Scenario · Scenario Book Page 1	p.12	#3	0.046875 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Anatomy of a Scenario · Pack The Bindle · Create The Junk Deck · Setup According to the Scenario · Scenario Book Page 1	p.12	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Starting Off (Choosing Vagrants) · Empress · Passive - Boxcar Queen · Starting Skills · Playstyle · Cursebearer · …	p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	Playing Vagrantsong ( The Scenario Phase ) · Rounds · Turns · A Vagrant's Turn · PASSIVES	p.14	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Vagrantsong — Rulebook (corpus doc 1162)	1. SPEND COINS	p.31	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 201 ms · first delta 4638 ms · total 8016 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 201 ms · ask 7813 ms · gateway work 8016 ms · total 8016 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3105
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 669
tok/sec: 201.7 tok/sec — 669 output tokens in 3.317 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 14s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 4s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1092), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.